Easter Eggs 002: Bell

A series dedicated to the strange and interesting things that can be uncovered by closely reading books. 

From Julian Bell's Van Gogh: A Power Seething:

Jeanne Calment was previously known to me thanks to a fascinating episode of the podcast The Omnibus, which describes her rise to fame as the (then) oldest living person. It also details the rather surprising Russian disinformation campaign following her death, which sought to cast doubt on the notion that a Western European democracy might have produced a person of such outstanding longevity.

I did not know, however—or had forgotten—that she also had this bit part in the life of the great painter who is the subject of Bell's exquisite and moving short biography. I have to say I was not expecting to find her name when I got to the book's endnotes.

Bell, by the way, is himself a kind of literary Easter egg, simply by virtue of existing. For he is, as one might have guessed, the grandson of Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf, wife of Clive Bell, mother of Quentin Bell, and therefore he has the whole heritage of Bloomsbury's literary and art historical gifts pulsating in his veins.